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The top 15 pharma companies by 2014 revenue

Mar 18, 2015 8:30am

The names at the very top of our yearly list of biggest pharma companies are no surprise. Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ), Novartis ($NVS), Roche ($RHHBY) and Pfizer ($PFE) have headed up the rankings for a couple of years now, albeit in varying order. But toward the bottom of the top 10, there's been a changing of the guard.

For the first time, a biotech company has nudged aside one of the biggest Big Pharma names. Eli Lilly & Co. ($LLY), which hung onto 10th place last year by its fingernails, is now out of the top 10, replaced by Gilead Sciences ($GILD) and its skyrocketing sales. Fueled by its brand-new blockbuster hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, Gilead revenue more than doubled last year, to $24.5 billion from $10.8 billion.

The rest of the top 10 are the usual suspects--Sanofi ($SNY), Merck ($MRK), GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK), AstraZeneca ($AZN) and Bayer HealthCare. They're in slightly different slots for 2014, but all present and accounted for.

But Gilead wasn't the only Big Biotech to make a major leap last year--and Eli Lilly fell farther down the list than one might think. So, to show all the action in the $20 billion neighborhood, we at FiercePharma decided to expand the list to 15 companies. That brought Amgen ($AMGN) and AbbVie ($ABBV) into the group--at 12th and 13th place--and restored Eli Lilly, if only in the number 14 slot.

Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY), a Big Pharma name that's been absent from the list for a few years, also made a reappearance, in 15th place.

If you've been keeping track, you know we're missing one company. We saved it for last, for drama's sake. It's the first time a generics company has made our top pharmas by revenue list--and the honor goes to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ($TEVA) and its $20.3 billion in revenue.

Stay tuned for the 2015 shuffle that's sure to come. Bristol-Myers loses its patent protection on the blockbuster antipsychotic Abilify in 2015, and Teva expects to finally get generic competition for its best-selling multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, to name a couple of changes afoot. But the biggest shift could come among our Big Pharma regulars. GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis recently closed their sale-and-swap deal, with GSK oncology going to Novartis, and Novartis vaccines going to GSK--plus a consumer health JV between the two.

And then there's the expected new arrival: Actavis ($ACT), which is buying Allergan for $66 billion, expecting to vault into pharma's top 10. By the end of 2015, the company will be operating under the Allergan name--and will be reporting sales of $25 billion-plus, if all goes well.